I wanted to re-check the 1987 catalog because I'm probably going to be looking at that Circuit today that I posted in the eBay thread forever ago. Anyone happen to have downloaded that one before the site was taken down? Or know of another place online that has these catalogs archived?

Or you can also attach them to a post in this thread/make a thread and attach them there. Maybe one of the guys that manages a catalog database here (velobase?) will find them and upload them to the greater web again.

Velobase should host a copy of these....couldn't hurt to collect up those catalog archives in one place.

I've been wanting to do this, but I don't get a good feeling about how people would react. Like the classicfuji.com guy goes to some odd lengths to obfuscate his pages, and he also pulls in full sized images resized on the client side, which slows down casual page flipping (randyjawa is also guilty of this big time ).

I would simply download the images and save them. In fact, I might do just that myself. I don't see how that would be a problem if it doesn't get posted back up on the web. Then, if one of the major sites go down, there is a repository. Maybe a handful of us could do this and upload them to a photobucket account and restrict the viewing access to members of the site. That way it wouldn't take traffic away from those who posted these catalogs (if that's what they want), but if something happens and the site goes down there would be a place to get the images to reconstitute the site.

While I'm thinking about it... I wonder if someone could come up with a nice little template for a page to display the catalogs? Some interfaces are better than others. I kind of like Classic Fuji because you can sort by year but also by model name and see what years each model ran. The one thing I would like to see would be a conversion of the summary specs pages into searchable text, but I know that's easier said than done.

__________________I stop for people / whose right of way I honor / but not for no one.

Originally Posted by bragi"However, it's never a good idea to overgeneralize."

If the owners of any vintage cycling website would be interested in having me host a backup location for their collections, I'd be happy to discuss that option with them. I have quite a bit of storage space that's not being utilized at this time on my hosting account. I'm also in the process of automating the backup of the file data on VeloBase.com on a more regular basis.

Don't be too hard on some of these guys who spend a fair bit of time working on websites dedicated to cycling who may not have the technical background in web development to make the best possible use of bandwidth or cause the occasional dead link when things are in a state of change. I write web based software for a living and it's still difficult for me to make changes to VeloBase sometimes. I've been trying to figure out a way to regenerate nearly 10,000 thumbnail images on the server because I want to go to a slightly larger size without a major headache. Traffic has reached a point some time ago that I've had to bring the entire site down for 5-10 minutes when I do a code deploy - partially due to the amount of files being transfered to the server, and also because so many files are always being accessed due to traffic it was causing deploys to fail. The smallest of possible deploys of VeloBase includes over 300 files these days, those are strictly the pages themselves and compiled code files.

Don't be too hard on some of these guys who spend a fair bit of time working on websites dedicated to cycling who may not have the technical background in web development to make the best possible use of bandwidth or cause the occasional dead link when things are in a state of change.

I keep thinking I should contact randyjawa to tweak his site (the front page loads 5.8MB in images, for a handful of thumbs), but I have no familiarity with FrontPage, or anything Windows for that matter, so I'm not sure how to gently tap him in the right direction and not get all up in his work flow.

I know what you mean but pleasantries aside....those catalogs (and the subsequent scans of them) are only bound by their original copyright to the companies who produced them. The images posted on the web technically aren't anyone's private property for them to give you a thumbs up or down to use.

I emphasize 'technically' because like Cuda2k says, those individual sites are hobbies for their owners and simply ripping their work is a crappy thing to do and would likely elicit some scorn from their respective curators.

I see what you mean...its a delicate situation. There's a fine line in this case between doing what you can technically (and legally) do and stepping on the toes of the folks who have come before you (and who are likely your friends here at C&V). Some folks have a bigger sense of pride when it comes to the content on their sites than others.